


Don't Lose Your Head (Because The Devil's In The Details)

by TheSilverQueen



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Also some Harry Potter and Supernatural stuff in here, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Hannibal's murder suit/onesie, Canon-Typical Violence, Devil!Will Graham, Hannibal is a Cannibal, Hannibal the floating murdering head, Invisibility Cloak, M/M, NOT CRACK I SWEAR
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-07-25 13:34:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7534672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSilverQueen/pseuds/TheSilverQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Mischa's death, Hannibal knows he can't avenge her alone, so he does the reasonable thing: he summons the Devil himself. Will gives him the standard agreement: 5 years and a kiss for Hannibal's immortal soul. When Hannibal demands more, Will decides to gift him with an invisibility cloak to help him in his quest for revenge.</p><p>Except five years later, Will realizes that he can't find Hannibal, because the clever human has used his invisibility cloak to hide from the hellhounds. So Will settles in to wait, because eventually, every soul ends up where it belongs. Even if Hannibal did turn his invisibility cloak into a bloody murder suit.</p><p>Now with this <a href="https://toni-of-the-trees.tumblr.com/post/160981210912/fast-or-painless-to-his-surprise-though">gorgeous art</a> that the lovely toni-of-the-trees made!!!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Invisibility Cloak

**Author's Note:**

> This story was inspired by a Devil!Will prompt from [peacefrog](http://archiveofourown.org/users/peacefrog/pseuds/peacefrog) which can be found [here](http://weconqueratdawn.tumblr.com/post/147250284877/crossroadscastiel-weconqueratdawn)

Will would like to make one thing very, very clear: He doesn’t go collect souls. He doesn’t. Ever. He’s the Devil, not Hermes (who, by the way, is one of the most irritating gods in existence sometimes). Souls come to him, and sometimes that’s because his hounds drag them in by their heels and sometimes because they are actually pretty willing.

(Those tend to be the weird ones.)

But hey, Will thrives off the weird ones. He was a weird one, back when he was . . . he wouldn’t say “human”, because he doesn’t think he had enough in common with them to claim that label, but when he was a lot less immortal and a lot more killable, yes, he was pretty weird himself. Sometimes he thinks that’s why the Creator chose him. Other times he thinks it’s because he’s gets along so well with the hounds, and maybe their previous guardian got tired of them chewing up all the furniture.

Anyways.

Will never goes to get souls. He’ll watch them be harvested, he’ll watch them scream on the rack, and sometimes he even helps organize the harvesting, but he never goes to get them.

That doesn’t mean he can’t hear the prayers. Or curses, those are pretty common too.

“May the devil curse you” or “I hope the devil gets you” or any other unimaginative reordering of that concept. Will’s heard them all, and they never have any kind of force or fire behind them. People don’t believe he’ll actually do anything, and any kind of prayer – because even summoning the devil is a prayer of its own – needs belief. Needs force. Needs something other than a dim desire and route cursing.

Which is probably why, when a little lost boy wandering in the snow starts screaming, Will answers for the first time.

* * *

The first thing he notices is a circle of blood. It’s fresh, very fresh, and it sings of pain and loss and hatred. It’s the oldest and simplest of all the rituals: a blood offering, in the hopes of a favorable answer. In the past, the blood was used to distract the poor demons summoned so they could be trapped or destroyed or – way, way, way back, before Will’s time – burned out of existence. 

But the summoner is a boy. A little boy, actually, dressed in rags and with frostbitten feet and ribs that show in the faint light of the glistening snow. 

Will’s first thought is, _Was I ever that little, once upon a time?_

His second thought is, _All that emotion, burnt out in one sacrifice. This is going to be a Big Request._

It warrants capital letters. You don’t drain your own blood to summon a demon for petty wants. Blood knows, and what it knows, it tells. 

This boy wants something badly. 

“What’s your name?” Will asks. It’d be nice, to put a name with the face. Will thinks he’s going to remember this face, even if he won’t interfere.

“Names have power.”

“Well, Names-have-power,” Will replies, “I can’t very well go granting whatever request is churning in your brain without a name.”

The boy takes a step closer. To human eyes, it won’t make much a difference, because Will doesn’t really care about what he wears, so there’s probably fur all over his clothes and there’s nothing that blends in better with darkness than hellhound fur. For Will’s eyes, though, it does a lot. This boy is practically burning up with emotion right now. His aura is saturated in red, to the point where if he got any redder, Will would say he’s a low-level demon trying – and failing – to pass himself off as a human child. There’s just so much rage, and it’s glorious.

To his surprise, the boy seems to sense that he’s impressive. Or perhaps he’s just that proud. Hard to tell.

In any case, the boy says, “Hannibal.”

And well, fair is fair. “I’m Will. Now, why have you gone calling for a soldier of the underworld, Hannibal?”

“I called for a soldier, yes,” Hannibal agrees. He takes another step closer, trailing blood behind him like little sparkling rubies. “You’re not a soldier. You’re something more.”

“Well, somebody didn’t die. I was impressed. Winter swallows a lot of souls these days.”

“Did you swallow – no.” Hannibal comes to an abrupt stop, and his eyes narrow. His back is as straight as a rod, but somehow he makes it even straighter, even though it means more blood decorating the puddle at his feet. “I want to make a deal.”

Winston comes snuffling up, curious that he hasn’t returned. Will pats at him in reassurance. Winston is the most loyal of his latest pack, always eager to sprawl next to him but equally eager never to see him leave. No matter where he goes, Winston is sure to follow not soon after. Surprisingly, he shows no interest in Hannibal, even though the boy’s half-dead from cold and starvation. And there’s no appearance from one of the annoying blonde sisters either, so no intervention from that side either.

Half-dead and no claim from a Sister of Fate and no interest from a hellhound.

This boy is going places.

“What’s in it for me?” Will returns, because clear terms is usually the best place to start. Anywhere else, and the mortal assumes you’re trying to be sneaky, when really, most demons are just bored and want some conversation with their snack.

“My soul.”

That causes a spike of interest from Winston. Or maybe it’s because Will didn’t feed them in the past hour. Sometimes hellhounds are more food-invested than any animal Will’s ever seen.

Clear terms, though, stay on track.

“Your soul? Eternal damnation ring a bell?” No flinch. Okay. “The rest of forever on the rack? Being cut apart piece by piece only for the next morning to have it start all over again? No food or water and burning heat and piercing cold?”

“Prometheus and Tantalus, and you are going to have to work a lot harder on scaring me.”

Kid knows some stuff. Winston snorts at him in amusement, and then sits down and rolls over. Will kinda wants to tell him now is not the time for a belly rub, but if he ignores Winston, the hound’s whining might draw the rest of the pack, and Will doesn’t want everybody here just yet. That’s a lot of hellhounds to be milling around this kid, and one of them might get bored or curious enough to take a bite. Will’s not ready to see this boy kick it just yet.

“Your soul’s the only part of you that’s immortal, Hannibal,” Will says. “You give that up, you have no bargaining chips left. Ever. That gives me license to break every single bone in your body, rip apart every little piece of muscle, and grind you down to blood and ash.”

Hannibal doesn’t even blink.

For Lucifer’s sake, what do kids read these days? Or is it watch? It might be watch. Will’s heard some amazing things about a thing called a television.

“Fine. What exactly am I trading you?”

“My sister.”

Will blinks. Hannibal is alone. He can’t see or smell anything on him. Not even a trace. Although to be fair, the blood is very distracting. “If she’d been dead more than a year or so, I can’t really bring her back,” he says warily. Ressurectionists are the worst. They always want somebody brought back, and then they whine non-stop about why the person who came back is like half a percent what they were before. Maybe they should’ve considered how much work it is to drag somebody back into a rotting dead body in a grave. And really, that isn’t demons’ work. That’s angels’ work. If angels, you know, existed. Winston brought back a feather once when Will got curious enough to ask, but it smelled like ichor, so Will’s pretty sure Winston just mauled some poor lowly god instead of tracking down a real life featherhead.

“I don’t want her back,” Hannibal insists. “I want revenge.”

Ah, good old fashion revenge. Will loves revenge. Mainly because it means he gets two souls for one price. And also because grinding down the wicked is really, really fun. Plus their reaction when he tells them his name is golden. 

“Not the normal type. I want revenge.”

Winston whines. Will can sense his desire to tear into flesh, but the deal isn’t done. Will won’t send Winston off on a useless chase when it’s clear this boy wants to hand out judgment himself.

“And how do you plan on getting this revenge, Hannibal?”

Hannibal smiles, and it’s not a nice smile. It’s sharp, jagged teeth that drip blood. 

Which is when Will realizes that there’s no knife around. Or rock. Hannibal’s bleeding, all right, and he drew this circle, but there’s no weapon in about fifty mile radius that smells like Hannibal’s blood. This kid drew blood with his teeth.

It bears repeating. This kid is going places.

Or would be. 

If he wasn’t about to lose his soul.

Will goes down to his knees. Eye contact is important for mortals when it comes to establishing trust and all that. “I can give you five years, and you can get all the revenge you want with those nice sharp teeth of yours,” he offers.

“Five years is nothing.”

“Five years is as long as I can give you, I’m afraid. Any longer and it’s gonna get a lot harder to come and uproot you.”

Hannibal doesn’t seem bothered by that fact. Then again, nobody is eager when the hellhounds come calling. Everybody tries to run, even those who know they won’t get far, because it’s instinct when you’re suddenly no longer the top predator in the room. Plus humans are really scared of things they can’t see, and hellhounds definitely rank up there in the “invisible scary things in the dark” category. 

At the same time, though, Will can tell Hannibal’s got his heart set on his goal. “Then I want something,” he says finally. “Something to ensure that five years will be enough. I won’t seal a deal if you get my soul and I get nothing.”

Kid. Going. Places.

Damn, he’s getting sentimental in his old age. Or is it middle age? 

Besides, Will thinks he’s got something that’ll do the trick. Bargaining always did amuse him, even if those on the rack had nothing but broken ribs to bargain with.

Winston whines unhappily at him, but when Will clicks his fingers again, the hellhound obediently opens his mouth and lets Will tug out a tooth. Nothing is sharper than hellhound teeth, and Will would like this cloak in one nice piece. It’s not exactly part of Will, per se, but it came with the job, and he hasn’t taken it off since he took up the oath. So he doubts it’ll come off easily, but, again, this is why he’s utilizing the sharpest weapon in existence. A few slices here and a few slices there, and then a faintly glimmering silvery cloak is slithering into a neat pile at his feet.

Will gathers it up and drapes it over Hannibal’s shoulders.

“It’s an invisibility cloak,” Will explains. “Five years should be nothing if you have this to help you. Unless you’re more incompetent than you’ve led me to believe.”

Hannibal closes firm fingers over the cloak. Already he’s swallowed up by it, and it’ll definitely trail in the snow, but he’ll grow up and the cloak will eventually adapt to him. In five years time, he’ll be well on his way into teenager status, and if Will remembers teenage years right, there’s a growth spurt in there somewhere.

“Thank you,” Hannibal says suddenly, and wow, talking with an invisible body head is strange even by demon standards. 

Also, good manners. Will would say he’s going places again, except. Well.

Will laughs and takes another step forward, until he’s so close he can feel each puff of breath from Hannibal on his face. Surprisingly – or maybe not so much – the breaths only come a hair faster. Otherwise, Hannibal meets his gaze with a steady heart and unflinching eyes. 

“Thank you and you’re welcome aren’t how you seal a deal with me, Hannibal Lecter.”

And there is the flinch.

Will 1, Hannibal . . . well. Hannibal a lot.

“I assume you want a kiss then?”

“I wouldn’t be a demon if I didn’t demand a taste of the payment,” Will remarks, and then before Hannibal says anything else that’ll make Will want to eat his stupidly attractive face and witty mind, Will seizes the boy by the shoulders and presses their lips together.

And oh, the taste, the taste.

This soul is going to be absolutely g-l-o-r-i-o-u-s when it comes in. Glorious. Will’s going to feast on him for as long as he possibly can, because he already is delicious and he hasn’t even taken a single life yet.

Hannibal blinks blankly at him when they part, panting. He’s still clutching the cloak close, though, which is good. Will would like it back one day. He wants to try the floating head creepiness out on some of the more annoying uppity members of the fifth circle. 

“Five years, Hannibal Lecter, and then I will come calling,” Will says softly, and then he steps into shadow and vanishes.

* * *

The police are baffled by the case. There is an entire group of men dead, throats ripped out and guts spilling on the floor and blood splattered all over trees and clothes. Yet the only witness account claims that there was it was perpetuated by a young boy’s head.

The police say, “Don’t you mean a young boy?” 

Which is already ridiculous. What young boy could cause this amount of damage?

No, the witness insists. It was a head. Just a head. A floating head.

The police dismiss the witness and close the case as some tragic animal encounter. The legend grows though, and for years onward, children hear the tale of what might happen to you if you wander too late in the woods at night, because there’s a carnivorous floating head about.

Will, though. He just laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feedback and criticism more than welcome! Especially since this is my first work. So have at it.
> 
> Also if you're curious how this story got started, it was literally me going, "Oooh this person has an interesting prompt. And ooh a shiny ask button! I should click it. Goddamn it I actually sent that what have i done." One hour later, "OH MY GOD THEY RESPONDED AND SAID THEY LIKED IT OMG OMG OMG". So thanks to peacefrog for bringing me into the Hannibal fandom.
> 
> If you want to see me do mature adult things like reblog pictures of Will's dogs and stuff, you can come flail about with me on my [tumblr](http://thesilverqueenlady.tumblr.com/) where I sometimes post [sneak peeks of future fics](http://thesilverqueenlady.tumblr.com/tagged/sneakpeeksundays) or just reblog endless amounts of Hannibal gifs
> 
> P.S. IDK why my tag "Not crack I swear" is all capitalized. I didn't write it capitalized. It makes me feel like I'm yelling at you, when really I was just trying to ensure no one thought I was absolutely bonkers, cuz I'm only slightly bonkers. ;)


	2. The Elder Wand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will comes to collect on his deal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: I have never read Dante. So although the prompt asked for Hannibal quoting Dante at Will with his usual sassy snark, erm, it isn't really going to happen. I'm just not familiar enough to try and attempt that. Sorry!

For the first time, Will breaks his word in a deal.

To be fair, though, it isn’t his fault, and unlike some less morally inclined, Will errs on the side of caution rather than anything else. It’s an unspoken rule that you never break a deal by coming earlier than expected. So instead of going to collect Hannibal Lecter’s soul in five years, it’s more like forty five years.

It’s not like he didn’t try.

Hannibal’s name came up, five years later as expected, and Will had sent off Winston with an absent pat and returned to business. One hellhound could easily take on one soul, even one supercharged with rage. Or so he’d thought, anyways.

Winston had returned, whining and tail tucked between his legs, four days later. Will had duly sent out Buster, and then Winston and Buster, and then the entirety of his personal pack. They’d all returned alternatively droopy and frustrated, circling anxiously and snarling at whatever poor demon had been foolish enough to try and stop them from digging up the asphodel. 

So Will sighs and puts on a new cloak. It’s not quite as powerful as the invisibility one, but it’s made of the discarded dreams tossed over Lethe, and so it can give quite a boost in terms of levitation.

Which is when Will finds that even he can’t find Hannibal.

Each soul is unique, even when it’s long gone or not even conceived. Will is the master of death itself – he can find any soul anywhere anytime, yet for some reason, Hannibal’s is lost to him. He ends up going in circles too, and gets so frustrated that he stomps on the ground and accidentally causes a volcano to erupt, creating an even bigger headache for himself when all the poor souls that were consumed in the resulting chaos end up clogging up the judgment lines and raising the noise levels to untenable decibels.

By the time that’s all sorted – well, time moves differently between where Hannibal is and where Will is. For Will, it’s close to two decades. For Hannibal, probably more like two or three years.

So Will gives up. He doesn’t think Hannibal’s stupid enough to think the deal has been called off, and all souls are revealed eventually.

Besides, Will’s also not stupid enough to think even hellhounds can sniff out an invisibility cloak.

So about four hundred years later, when Winston suddenly sits bolt upright and sniffing the air frantically, Will knows it’s time. He also knows that this is going to be a personal collection, to retrieve both his Hannibal and his invisibility cloak.

* * *

Hannibal, to Will’s surprise, isn’t hidden away in some massive bunker or sprawling castle. 

He’s in a mental hospital. One for criminals too.

Will cocks his head. Yes, Hannibal had already proven a sadistic streak, but he’d also been incredibly clever, to outwit a pack of hellhounds, so Will doesn’t quite understand how he’d been so stupid to get caught. Winston strains forward eagerly, though, so Will doesn’t think it’s a trap, but either way, he flips up his hood and takes careful steps forward.

It’s laughably easy to pass through the walls and descend to the cells. The guards shiver and draw back when he approaches, because even if human eyes can’t comprehend his presence, human souls can still sense the danger, and his cloak draws the warmth and happiness from the air. Not to mention his huge hellhounds, whose nails click on the floor to become the tapping noises humans can never quite figure out the origin.

Step by step, Will goes further, and even the babbling prisoners here draw back, go silent, or even faint. Luckily, there are no psychics, and no one dares tries to meet his eyes, so nobody goes blind today.

He finds Hannibal strapped to a chair. 

Some obnoxious man in a lab coat is staring eagerly at a screen of readings, and Hannibal is covered in electrodes and wires. Will can tell he’s trying to remain calm and unshakeable, but whatever drugs they’ve given him are making him sweat, and the electricity coursing through him is making him repeatedly clench and unclench his fingers and toes. The scene looks like what happens when a new demon tries to pretend they’re the best torturer ever but can only think of the most basic ways to hurt humans. 

In other words, Will isn’t impressed.

Sure, Hannibal is uncomfortable. Sure, he can’t escape. And sure, he can’t reach out and bite the lab coat man like he wants to, but Hannibal’ll never talk because of this set-up. Even Winston sits down and pants in confusion. 

“Time to end the charade, right, boy?” Will asks and Winston barks.

Will holds up his hand and says, _Stop._

At once everything freezes. The lab coat man, the electricity pulses, the cameras, the equipment, everything. Except, of course, Hannibal, who’s already craning his head around, calm again.

Clever man, Will thinks.

“Hello, Hannibal Lecter,” Will says, and lowers his hood.

Hannibal looks directly at him, no fear. “Hello. Come to collect so soon?”

Winston growls, but Will is – once again – unreasonably and inexplicitly charmed. “I once predicted you’d be going places,” he replies, and Will can see the marks of countless souls, laying down curses against the many faces Hannibal Lecter has worn, death threats and dying pleas alike, all crumbling helplessly against the wall that is Hannibal. “I see you have gone a few, although not quite where I expected.” 

Hannibal shrugs, as much as he can bound shoulder and arm. “Your gift was very useful.”

“You turned it into a suit?”

“Cloaks are no longer in fashion.” 

Somehow, Hannibal says that with a straight face. Will has no idea how. 

“You,” Will says incredulously, “You took an invisibility cloak fashioned at the dawn of creation, one of the tokens of death itself, and you cut and sewed it into a murder suit?”

“The cloak form was impractical,” Hannibal replies. “As I grew, it failed to cover everything when I walked or if the wind was blowing or if the rain was falling. So I improvised. And the cutting and sewing seemed to have no effect; I can barely even see the seams now. I assume it has some regenerative properties of its own?”

“What did you even cut it with?”

“Old family tools.”

Will frowns and reaches out. The cloak – the suit now, he guesses – whispers to him, speaking of gold and silver blades, slicing gently, and, more importantly, black threads woven into stitches. Blessed blades and thread, bestowed with the honor and power of faith and holy water. Not strong enough to cut, as hellhound teeth, but strong enough to temporarily rend. And then, of course, the cloak would have repaired itself, but remained in the new shape, guided by constant worship of Hannibal’s touch and murders.

Hannibal rotates one of his hands, slowly, but does not dislocate his thumb. Will can tell that he could, but currently he seems just to be showing off.

“How did it feel?” Will asks.

“To what?”

Winston growls automatically, eyes flashing. Of all things hellhounds don’t tolerate, dishonesty is one of them. It’s why they are always so good at catching those who run from the deals they have struck.

To his credit, Hannibal understands the sound immediately, even if his mortal ears can’t perceive it in the same way Will’s can.

“It felt powerful,” Hannibal confesses, rolling back his head to stare at the ceiling. His eyes are rapt and distant, reliving memories Will can taste on the back of his mouth. Blood and sweet, sweet vengeance. “It felt _glorious_. I took the pigs who wasted my sister and taught them the true meaning of fear and superiority, and they died squealing like the useless piglets they were. As rude in death as in life.”

Will shifts uncomfortably. He didn’t even know he still could flush, and yet here he is.

To cover, he says, “Are you ready to go?”

Never let it be said that Death is not polite when it finally comes. 

“Why?” Hannibal asks, genuinely curious. “Going my way? I assumed these wonderful hounds of yours would be my escorts.”

“They are escorts. But their version of escorting and mine are rather different. I thought you might appreciate the choice.” Will holds up his hand, and Winston displays his powerful jaws. Hellhounds escort with their teeth, tearing a human body to bits in order to drag the soul back. Will can make it much easier. One touch is all he needs.

Hannibal smiles. “I appreciate the offer. I would prefer your way.”

Okay then. Will walks until he’s looming over Hannibal, the stereotypical figure of Death hovering off the unlucky sod about to die. Or in this case, way overdue soul about to be collected. “Fast or painless?” he asks idly. It doesn’t really matter. Death is death. Hannibal will pass either way.

To his surprise though, all Hannibal requests is, “Make it interesting.”

That’s a new one.

Will puts his hand onto Hannibal’s chest, and immediately his rib cage begins to bend under the pressure. He can read Hannibal’s emotions like this: discomfort, curiosity, adrenaline rush, fast thoughts, disdain, yearning. Will presses a little harder, and a bone threatens to give, but all the same, Will can still feel it: curiousity.

Hannibal _wants_ to see what Will is going to do. No matter what he does. Hannibal wants to see.

So Will takes a deep breath – hey, didn’t know he could still breathe either – and pushes his hand straight down to Hannibal’s heart. Hannibal screams, back bowing and fists clenched as he struggles instinctively, but he’s already dead, because no human could survive that. Winston barks in joy, and Will withdraws the frozen heart he’s due, glowing incandescent with the soul he’s owed. 

Immediately, time restarts.

To human eyes, Hannibal convulses, mouth open in a silent scream, and then the monitors go berserk as his heart ceases to beat. The lab coat man immediately starts babbling frantically as orderlies rush in, bursting with questions and expending useless energy pounding on Hannibal’s chest in an attempt to revive him.

Will laughs. Hannibal had despised Chilton so. The man’s reputation will never be able to recover from this, now that his unsanctioned experiment has cost the life of one of the most famous serial killers in history whom everyone wants answers from.

“Was that interesting enough?” Will says.

Hannibal doesn’t answer. To be fair, he’s currently panting on the floor, clutching at his non-existent heart. Every soul has that reaction. At least he’s no longer in that ghastly prison jumpsuit though. 

Will’s only ever seen Hannibal in an invisibility cloak and rags, but somehow the three-piece suit fits in perfectly with his imaginings of a grown Hannibal.

“Where,” Hannibal stops to suck in a breath because he too doesn’t realize he no longer needs air, “where are we going?”

Oh, right. One more thing. 

Will clicks his fingers, and Winston lunges forward, sinking his teeth into Hannibal’s stomach. If he were still alive, it’d be a fatal wound, like a gut stab, but Winston is a hellhound, so it’s more like a spear through someone’s entire stomach. Hannibal gurgles and punches Winston automatically, but it’s no use. No force in the world can get a hellhound off unless they want to get off.

When Winston finally disengages, licking his chops with a self-satisfied woof, Hannibal glares. “I thought you said that the lateness was your fault, not mine.”

“So it was,” Will says and pats appreciatively on Winston’s head. “Doesn’t mean I’m stupid enough to think you won’t try to run. But Winston’s tasted your blood now, and your blood has been on that invisibility cloak. It won’t do you half as much good now, unless you managed to cleanse it, and I doubt you know the ritual to do that.”

Hannibal raises an eyebrow and offers his wrists, kneeling like a supplicant worshipping an elder god. “I don’t intend to run.”

“Everybody says that. Everybody tries. Better safe than sorry.”

“A reasonable precaution, I suppose. I’ll allow it.”

‘Allow it’, says he, as if he had a choice against a hellhound big enough to swallow him whole.

 _Kid who’s going places_ , Will remembers, and yeah, Hannibal had been. Wistfully, he wonders how glorious Hannibal would be as an angel of legend, fierce with rage and bathed in light and charged with single-minded purpose. The wings alone would probably be enough to have Will at the altar instead of Hannibal, kneeling and offering his best in worship.

But Will’s getting distracted now. He’s done his job. Now he’d better get back to court before someone inevitably tries a coup. It’s happened 665 times and if it happens once more, he’s going to incinerate someone. Or something. He’s not picky.

“Oh look at that,” Will says airily. “Time to go.”

Hannibal opens his mouth, but it’s too late. Will’s already grabbed his waist and toppled the both of them over, falling straight through the floor and getting so fast they outpace light, passing through rock and lava and dirt, all the way down to the waiting boats, with Winston howling and chasing playfully after them in great big leaps, tongue lolling and barking happily. A touch overdramatic, perhaps, but it’s also the faster way down, and Will loves the feeling of weightlessness that he gets with this. It’s the only time he doesn’t feel burdened down. 

He leaves Hannibal gasping on the floor. 

The man’s clever enough. He can figure out the rest of the way. Besides, he’s caused enough chaos in Will’s schedule in this last half an hour. Will does not want to drag him all the way to the center and see how much more chaos he can produce.

* * *

It takes Hannibal a reasonable amount of time. Nine days, to be exact.

Will’s duly impressed, although he never goes to greet souls, so he just nods at the news and carries on. One soul is nothing compared to all the other batches flooding in, and some are even weirder than normal. For example, there’s been a girl with no skin? Very strange. Will blames Hannibal’s peacocking kills for the rise in strange, lost souls wandering down. 

Of course, Will’s refusal to get involved doesn’t mean other demons don’t.

And to them, Hannibal is very impressive indeed, apparently. It only takes about a month before one of them comes up and begs for Hannibal to be given access to a specialized tool. 

Demons have ranks, and they’re very organized. The most basic and lowest levels torture with their bare hands, and the more advanced you get, the shinier the tools. It’s how a soul is broken, generally, passing from the least experienced to the most, until they either break or wither. 

Most break. 

Will, on an impulse, allows Hannibal access to the elder wand. It’s another tool close to the heart of death, born from a dying branch in the world tree, and it too has unspeakable power. Now that Will’s knows Hannibal can’t run off with it, he’s curious to see what Hannibal can do with it. 

Even better, this tool can’t be reshaped even by blessed old family heirlooms.

* * *

_“YOU TURNED MY ELDER WAND INTO A SCALPEL?!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp, there be Norse mythology creeping in. I swear this wasn’t intended.
> 
> Also, my drafts are done for the Hannibal big bang, so the next update should not take another month, I swear.


	3. The Resurrection Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal claws his way out of hell. Too bad Will came along for the ride. Unless, of course, that was Hannibal's plan all along. . .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still no Dante, sorry . . . a lot more Harry Potter and Supernatural though, if that helps.

Hannibal remains unrepentant about changing the elder wand, claiming that it serves greater use to him as a medical instrument he was familiar with than a wizarding tool he was not. Will finds that he is just charmed enough by Hannibal’s defiance to let it pass, the same way he let the invisibility cloak suit pass, and seeing as Hannibal remains mum on how, exactly, he managed to shape the elder wand, Will doesn’t see a need for correction or punishment.

Hannibal is still, after all, serving his due.

A lot of stories argue over whether or not hell is cold or hot, and the answer is: neither. Hell is whatever you don’t want it to be. For most people, it’s true that it is hot, because they’ve been told that sinners burn and so they expect it so much that they come to actually fear it, and then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of souls actually roasting in hell.

For Hannibal, though, it’s cold. Freezing, just like that cold night when Will stepped out of the darkness to answer the blood call of a little boy. Hannibal’s shed most of that life, but his aversion to cold remains, to the point where he can hardly ever wears more than one shirt and one pair of pants, because anything else simply melts off of him due to his perception of hell being so much colder that his body becomes the warmest thing in the entire area. It’s punishment and justice all rolled into one, although Hannibal bears it better than most.

Of course, this could also be because most souls who are burning on the rack seem him in little else but a shirt and pants and wonder at his ability to withstand the heat.

In any case, Hannibal quickly moves through the ranks. Will would say he goes up, but the hierarchy doesn’t really work like that. You can go up and down, but some also slide sideways or vaguely at an angle. Hannibal, for example, moves from basic torture to more prolonged mind games, and he’s not necessarily more powerful than the top demons, but he’s also not in the same place that he was when he first arrived.

When Will finally deigns to visit him, he’s in the middle of pulling apart some poor soul’s rib cage, making neat, delicate little incisions with his scalpel and he works organs free one by one.

Honestly. One of the most powerful and blunt tools ever created, made for brute force, and Hannibal’s using it to make millimeter long incisions into souls.

Hannibal freezes once he senses Will. He’s gotten better at it, but then again, all souls are more attuned to Will in hell. It’s a lot harder to conceal his power here, and often times he doesn’t bother. Why should he hide? This is his realm, and these are his subjects. They should know who to fear.

“Fancy a walk?” Will asks.

“Is that how you greet all of your subordinates?” Hannibal asks dryly, forearms glinting with blood and goosebumps on legs.

Will shrugs. “Why not? I can divine all of your true names at a glance, and it’s not like you know mine. Yelling ‘you there’ gets really tiring after a century or two.”

Hannibal gives him the side-eye for that. It looks even weirder with bright maroon eyes than it did as human maroon ones. “I thought you said your name was Will.”

“And so it was,” Will replies. “Back when I was human. It doesn’t have any power over me anymore.”

“You say that like my name has power over me.”

Will smiles, and it’s not a kind smile. Hannibal hasn’t really gotten involved in any of the pissing matches between demons yet, and it’s kind of a pity. Demons don’t fight the same way humans do, in terms of the style of fight and the arena. It’s both dirtier and nobler, in a way, but both have the power of absolute decimation. Better Hannibal learn the pain and the price from Will than from someone cocky and pushy who Hannibal would absolutely despise losing it.

“Come here, Hannibal Lecter,” Will says.

Hannibal’s entire body jerks. The scalpel slips out of numb fingers, and suddenly he can’t close his eyes or breathe or speak, except to take one robotic step after another closer. Even as Hannibal raises his hands to fight, Will steps through them and puts his palm right onto Hannibal’s center, where his heart would be if it wasn’t squirreled away in Will’s domain.

Hannibal grits his teeth, but Will can already see the burn, inflaming and eating away at Hannibal’s skin, and the pain steadily increases until Hannibal drops to his knees, gasping and panting.

“Names _always_ have power,” Will reminds Hannibal. “Until you shed them for another.”

“I did shed that name. That was the name of a weakling human. I am something new.”

“Not yet. Or else that name would have had no effect.”

Hannibal glares at him, fingers clenched in the dirt as the remaining sparks lick at his chest. “You’re the devil. Any name you call will answer no matter how long it’s been shed.”

Will shrugs, and as he does he can feel the great joints of hidden wings flex, like chains, both freeing and imprisoning. Hannibal can see some of them, he can tell, because his eyes widen just a little bit. “Even the devil is bound by certain rules,” Will tells him, “and I wasn’t the first. Nor will I be the last, I reckon. But either way, I was more like you once than you will ever be like me, and so I play by some of your rules. I no longer answer to my human name because there’s nothing human left of me. There’s still something human in you.”

Hannibal pushes himself to his feet, inch by gritty inch, replying, “I didn’t eat humans. I ate pigs.”

At that, Will smiles. For all that Hannibal loves the game of telling only truths, cut up and mixed together to form a lie, he still hasn’t learned the art of seeing real truth the way Will can. Then again, he is very young, for a demon. “Not the ones you ate, Hannibal. In Hell, what you eat is not who you are. It’s at the core of you and the shape of you and the mind of you. You are still more human than not.”

“Are you trying to shame me into acknowledging my so-called sins now? Really?”

“Again, not about the sins. It’s about the sinner.” Will puts his hand back inside Hannibal’s center, and although Hannibal braces again, this isn’t about inflicting pain. He tightens his fingers, and Hannibal chokes, scrabbling instinctively against Will’s immovable arms. “Feel that? That’s the core of what human soul you have left. Ones like me have turned it into a power source, feeding and growing, but it doesn’t define us. Yours still defines you. It’s not just a source of power, it’s pride and remembrance and connection. You refuse to let go, and so it defines you still.”

Something in Hannibal darkens at that, dangerous and deep, like a true demon. “I won’t be a mindless tool, William,” and how he gets that threatening tone when faced with the Devil, Will doesn’t know but he definitely admires.

“I never said a source of power for me. It’s a source of power for you. But here.”

Will plucks a pomegranate from a tree – although to Hannibal, it would seem to be thin air – and offers it to him. It ripens beautifully in Will’s hands, splitting down right in the middle with fragment ruby seeds spilling across his palms.

Hannibal scrounges up a smile at the display. “Are we to roleplay Persephone and Hades now?” he jokes.

“Pomegranates are the only fruit that grow down here. It does have restorative properties.” And it binds a soul more tightly to hell, making it more difficult to escape, but Will doesn’t say that. “And in all fairness to Hades, Persephone was not forced to eat the seeds of the fruit Hades offered.”

“No?”

“No,” Will says softly, watching as Hannibal eats one seed and then another. “Persephone came down of her own free will. Just like you.”

* * *

Despite all the pomegranates, Hannibal still makes a break for it not long afterwards, and he actually gets pretty far, scrambling almost halfway up the ocean before Will catches up. 

“Hannibal,” Will calls.

The tell-tale jerk of Hannibal’s body speaks wonders to Will.

It’s not enough to arrest Hannibal’s momentum, like last time, but he still paused. He’s shed enough of his remembrance to wriggle out of the many openings in hell’s gates, but not enough for his name to still not be his.

Hannibal circles gracefully, blinking down at Will like a shark. “Are you here to drag me back?” he asks idly.

“Nope.”

Hannibal’s smug expression falters.

“I’m here because I got tired of watching you swim so slowly,” Will informs him, and when Hannibal’s face twists like someone shoved a lemon down his throat, Will laughs and shoots up to nab him, bouncing through water and space and time to land on a beach. Hannibal coughs up water on him as retaliation, so Will spreads his wings to let them dry, enjoying the honest surprise on Hannibal’s face.

“I used to swim in university. I won several medals.”

Will flicks some excess water back him. “And I’ve swum in the waves of a supernova,” he teases. “To me, you’re all slow.”

Hannibal pouts, and somehow, with his face dripping wet, it’s even cuter than he was a little boy. “So why did you give me pomegranate to bind me to hell if you were only going to help me escape?” he asks.

“Rite of passage,” Will says. “Everybody tries. But one, I have your heart, so it’s not like you’d get far, and two, it tells us how strong you’ve become. You’ve become strong enough to operate up here, without the power boost hell gives, and stronger is always a good sign. Survival of the fittest and all that.”

“I did not struggle up here to demonstrate strength,” Hannibal says, and of course not. Because it’s Hannibal.

“Well, don’t mind me. I’m just here to watch.”

* * *

To anyone else, Hannibal would seem to be meandering without a purpose, readjusting to what the surface looks like with flesh and blood humans instead of glowing tortured souls, but to Will, Hannibal’s an open book. He has a soul in mind, and he’s going to get it, and Will’s going to really enjoy the soul.

Of course, he doesn’t really expect to end up in a music store.

“Ooooh, what’s this?”

Hannibal gives him a strange look. “A piccolo.”

“It looks like a tiny flute to me.”

Hannibal closes his eyes like Will’s just whacked him across the face. It’s truly fascinating how mere words about musical instruments can cause true pain on his face. “A gross oversimplification. How can you know so much about humans and fail to know a common instrument?”

“You know, funnily enough, when it comes to the souls and hearts I’ve collected, music instruments tend not to be the last thing they think about.”

“What about knowing the human world?”

Will shrugs. “I’ve been like this since the great flood,” he admits. “I don’t tend to walk amongst you humans. I’ve got a lot of work to do, and you know, I can tell a lot about you without needing to know your familiarity with music.”

Will can sense Hannibal drawing himself up for an argument, so it’s probably best that it is in that moment that a young man walks into view, carrying delicate strings in his hand and humming a soft tune under his breath. Hannibal’s eyes immediately snap to him, and the switch from debate partner to hunter is so flawless, it’s like watching a chattiest bird in existence evolve into a sleek jaguar, silent and deadly and slinking amongst the brush with a target in sight. Will almost wants to applaud.

The man stops dead upon seeing Hannibal. “Dr. Lecter?” he stammers.

“Hello, Mr. Budge. How was last night’s opera? I heard it had mixed reviews.”

Will does snicker at that. Hannibal’s tone is so nonchalant one would think he had just climbed out of bed, yet he’s so clearly in predator mode. And Budge looks flabbergasted, compulsively swinging his little wire around and around instead of making any reasonable dive for a phone and police. Not that police would help, of course. Even if they could see Hannibal, none of their bullets could touch him.

“I, um, well. . .”

“No words?” Hannibal’s voice lowers and softens, as if speaking to a lover. “Yet you had so much to say, at trial.”

It’s like the word “trial” triggers something in Budge. One moment he’s still stammering and wringing his hands with that wire, and the next he’s the one turning animalistic, leaping at Hannibal with enough force to send them staggering one step back.

Will can almost taste Budge’s pleasure. He feels himself young and strong and able to take Hannibal by surprise with weapons of human flesh – that’s a new one – yet he doesn’t seem to realize that Hannibal takes no damage and does not hesitate at the human wire being wrapped around his arm. In fact, Hannibal grins with bloody teeth and actually reels Budge closer by the wire, using how Budge has anchored it to his hand to get a good grip and yank, hard enough to send Budge off balance.

When Budge falters, Hannibal sends him flying across the room. He slams into the wall, hard enough that several instruments fall over, and slumps down, dazed.

“What are you?” Budge chokes out.

Hannibal reaches out, still grinning, and says, “Something you will never be able to replace, even at the height of your success.” 

Which is when a giant hellhound leaps up through the floorboards, panting and howling, and tears out Budge’s heart with one giant rip of powerful jaws, swallowing down the soul with a satisfied sound.

“You – ” Hannibal exclaims, insensate with rage.

“Hey there, Applesauce,” Will greets, striding over to offer the hellhound scratches on the chin. Applesauce whips her tail back and forth in a frenzy, rolling over instantly to offer her belly. She’s one of the friendliest hellhounds in the entire pack, which why her kills are almost always neat and quick.

Hannibal whirls on him, and this time, the teeth are not bared in a grin. “What,” he grits, “was that?”

Will tsks at him. “A reminder,” he says sternly, “that the longer you hold onto your pride and your remembrance, the harder it will be for you to shed your name. Only certain souls are meant for demons to take, and Tobias Budge was not one of them. For everyone else, reapers and hellhounds do that.”

Hannibal’s jaw twitches, like he aches to take a bite out of Applesauce, but he restrains himself.

Good. Hellhounds can chew up demons too, and it’s never pretty. 

“The next time you pick a human soul to torment, Hannibal, try and remember that,” Will says, and then he takes Applesauce by the scruff and lets her bound down to hell. Hannibal can find his own way back, because every demon needs to learn that climbing out is never as difficult as climbing back in. Although it will be a shame if Hannibal slips and falls into Lethe. His mind is uniquely brilliant, if stubborn and single-minded.

* * *

The next time Hannibal slips away from hell, Will doesn’t find out until much later, when a reaper comes knocking and deposits a shell of a man onto the floor of his waiting room.

“What is _that_ supposed to be?" 

Jay, which isn’t really their name but it works well enough for translation for Will’s records, shrugs. “Well, he definitely was marked for here, but I think one of yours worked on him a little bit.”

“A little bit?”

Will called this thing a shell of a man for a reason. He’s missing most of the flesh on his face, half of his nose, some of his fingers and toes, a good deal of skin from his torso, and his spine is broken. Yet he didn’t die of said injuries, as his wailing soul attests. He was merely incredibly full of pain and apparently highly susceptible to suggestion via influence and persuasion.

Huh. Will hadn’t though Hannibal had graduated to wielding that kind of skill yet.

“How much is he before his time?” Will asks, as Winston starts sniffing at the shell and backs off immediately due to the stench.

Jay shrugs. “This one’s had a fluid life, no fixed point. This isn’t even the first attempt either.”

“By one of mine?”

“No, a family relative I think.”

“Is the relative alive?”

“As far as I can tell.”

“Fair enough. I’ll deal with it. Thanks.”

Jay dissipates immediately. Reapers aren’t anymore human that Will is, although they’ve got a much larger dose of the “doesn’t look human” injection than Will. All Will got are large freaky wings and a black outfit he can never shed. Reapers got the freaky black floating robes and half transparency and little scythes all over their eyes for those who have the power to see. All they generally retain is the little human quirks of speech, like “I think”. Reapers don’t think. They know, just like Will does.

Winston comes bounding back with happy little barks, and Hannibal follows soon afterwards, looking mildly bewildered. Although to be fair, that could be because Winston slobbered all over him, and Will’s pretty sure no one’s told Hannibal how to get hellhound slobber off of him.

“You called?”

Will nudges at the soul again, which promptly starts wailing and cursing in a high screechy tone. “You wanna explain this?”

“I didn’t kill him,” Hannibal says immediately, hands folded behind his back.

“Oh, I know.”

“Then . . . ?”

“Come here, Hannibal Lecter,” Will commands softly, injecting as much power into his voice as possible, and Hannibal stiffens. 

Yet Hannibal doesn’t move. The stiffening was Hannibal’s instinctive response, gearing up for a fight, but no compulsion comes. He simply stands and wait and breathes, and eventually, his shoulders start to relax when he realizes that he feels no push to move, no pull to fight. He feels nothing at all.

“You didn’t call me here to scold, did you, Will?” Hannibal says, finally moving to climb one step at a time up to Will’s dais. 

Will smiles lazily and leans back, basking in the heat of Hannibal’s soul as it comes ever closer, his own eyes beginning to burn like embers in response to Hannibal encroaching on his space. “Whatever would give you that thought?” he purrs, spreading his legs when Hannibal nudges politely, pushing so close than his hands are centimeters from the powerful wings that fold out of Will’s shoulders.

“You want to know my thoughts?” Hannibal says, so soft that Will reads the words more from the arrangement of puffs of breath than the actual words themselves.

“Your mind is unique, darling, surely you knew that.”

Hannibal’s hands make contact then, and Will sucks in a sharp breath, feeling at once the aching cold than never leaves Hannibal’s aura and the burning pressure of his fingers, gripping tight into the clothes Will’s never able to remove. If they were still human, the force Hannibal is exerting would be enough to leave week long bruises, but as demons, it’s like a brand against skin, so warm that the line between pleasure and pain wavers, even to Will’s enhanced senses.

“I think,” Hannibal whispers, “that you looked at this pig, and saw that I sat back and let him claw himself apart whilst the hellhounds ate up the scraps, and you thought that it was beautiful.”

And Hannibal, at that, gets one hand underneath Will’s top, and Will thinks dazedly, _Well, that’s new,_ and doesn’t think again for a long period of time.

* * *

It’s hard to get a good sense of time passing in hell, because time itself can be fluid here depending on the person you’re with, so when Will finally comes back to himself, all his senses can tell him is that some time has indeed passed. How much and whether anything’s blown up in his absence are entirely up for investigation or interpretation, really.

“For the devil,” Hannibal murmurs into his back, “you really are much smaller than I thought you would be, wee man.”

Will snorts and smacks him with a wing, but gently, because his wings can pierce through almost any substance in the universe. “You and I know well enough that larger doesn’t automatically mean scarier,” he retorts. “And besides, if I really wanted to be terrifying as ‘The Devil’, then all I really need to do is darken the aura around me. Bit of night to make your outline look creepy and everyone starts freaking out.”

“And the wings?”

“Came with the job, although they kinda make up their own mind whether they’re solid or not.”

Hannibal looks pointedly at where one wing is halfway through his body and the other is covering it. “You have parts of your body you cannot control? How gratifyingly human you must feel,” he drawls.

“You did not just compare morning wood to my wings.”

Hannibal says nothing, only grinning at him with shining teeth and glowing eyes. If he were exerting more power, he’d be showing off the horns and claws he’s starting to grow, and he’d look more like the devil than Will does, so much so that they almost roleplay for an angel with a demon, star-crossed lovers wrapped in the shielding darkness of Will’s bedchamber.

“Do you even experience mornings, as you are?” Hannibal asks curiously. “This bed smells rather musty, underneath everything.”

Why Hannibal even _needed_ enhanced senses, Will has no idea. The man’s nose is so good he might as well be an apprentice hellhound. “I’ve never slept, if that’s what you’re asking. I don’t need to. Sometimes Applesauce or Winston want to cuddle, and that’s when I sometimes sit here, but other than that, no.”

Hannibal hums in agreement. “I have also noticed less of a desire to sleep,” he confesses, almost shyly, if that’s even possible. “I was not sure if that was because of my transformation after death or the result of my attempts to shed my remembrance.”

“Hannibal,” Will says quietly, “there’s no remembrance in you anymore. I don’t know what you did. But whatever was holding you back . . . it’s all gone now.”

“I didn’t find peace, if that’s what you’re hinting at.”

“This isn’t hell with a capital ‘h’, Hannibal. This is just hell. The point of becoming like me and you is to become something other than human. Not better or worse. Just other.”

“That is not what the Bible says.”

“Wouldn’t know,” Will says, “I was born before that dusty old book existed.”

Hannibal rolls back, stretching out like a particularly luxurious cat, all long lines of muscle and power and heat. Even without a heart, Will feels the draw to consume him and drag him down to the depths, where he can never be saved from Will’s grasp. Not a prisoner, because no caged bird is half as alive or glorious as a free one, but bound by chains far stronger than command. To have Hannibal reclining at his side of his own free will would be amazing, even if rather unlikely.

“And how were you born, Will?”

Will smiles. “Pain. And wood, and feather, and stone.”

Hannibal smiles back, lazily, and in that moment, Will realizes something. He was reborn as the devil because he’d fulfilled the four requirements that changed him to something beyond human. Hannibal is almost identical – he has endured pain, he has wielded wood, he has borne feathers. 

All that is left is stone.

Will stands, abruptly, and says, “Did you know? After I was reborn, I could never remove my clothes, no matter how much I tried?”

“I don’t remember it being terribly difficult,” Hannibal yawns.

“No, you don’t understand. My clothes are part of me, but they’re more than that. They’re part of being the devil,” Will says urgently. “They are part of the original devil, Hannibal. Once you accept the job, it’s yours forever.”

“So what, you’re trying to pass it off to me now?” 

Will groans. For once in Hannibal’s existence, he’s choosing to be sarcastic instead of clever, and god knows he wants to smack the smugness right off of Hannibal’s face. 

Right. Time for a change in tactic.

“I lied to you,” Will says instead.

That gets Hannibal’s attention. He sits up, smugness falling away to become wariness, hunted and hunter all in one. “About what?”

Will closes his eyes and _reaches_ , and for the first time, instead of a pomegranate, he produces a simple round stone, smooth and rough in equal measure, a normal ordinary grey but for a single cracked line down the middle. It could be identical to any of the stones that line the rivers of hell or the gates of Lethe, but for the pure power that it radiates. After the first time Will had refused it, it had vanished, and he had never been able to summon it again. Instead, he’d grown countless new pomegranate trees with every piece of fruit that he’d plucked instead, scattering their seeds all over in his frustration and producing endless amounts of fruit until his demons had started using them as catapult projectiles and Will had given up.

“This,” Will says quietly, “is the Resurrection Stone. It _can_ bring back the dead.”

The second Hannibal looks at it, he can’t look away, and slowly, so slowly, it lifts itself off of Will’s palm and begins a leisurely float across the bed to Hannibal.

“All you have to do is turn it three times and recite the name of whoever you want. It can bring them back. Whoever it is. From whenever they left you.”

Hannibal reaches out and brushes the stone. It wobbles, but continues floating, unperturbed. To Will’s eyes, it’s getting brighter and brighter with each inch, until it’s almost like a mini-sun, illuminating the entire room. Of all the temptations of the tools of the devil, this is the one that Will had been told the least about yet warned the most. If humans had had the apple of knowledge to bring about the fall from Eden, the resurrection stone was the downfall of the devil and demons and the dead.

“It’s yours,” Will says, because now he can’t stop the words pouring out of his mouth. It’s coming like a fountain, uncontrolled and unstoppable. “It’s yours, Hannibal, use it.”

Hannibal closes his fist around it. Turns it once. Twice. Thrice. With each turn, he glows too, incandescent, like the soul Will plucked from his chest, until he looks like the holiest and brightest soul with the darkest of all horns and claws gracing his fingers and forehead. Demon and angel and mortal, all in one, good and bad and neutral in equal measure, both something more and something simple, and for once since he became the devil, Will feels dwarfed.

Hannibal could destroy him now, with that stone.

And then Hannibal closes his eyes, and sighs, and drops the stone so that it pings gently off the floor.

“That is made for humans,” he says, suddenly a lowly demon again. “I am human no longer. Is that not what this all has been about?”

“Yes,” Will says, something like joy bubbling up in his chest, although he can’t quite verbalize why, “yes and no, and yes.”

Hannibal doesn’t question this.

Probably because he’s too busy screaming.

Hannibal falls off the bed to the floor, screaming and clawing, as great black wings burst from his back, bone emerging inch by inch until they’re long enough to encompass half the room, and then flesh emerges to cover, and then feathers begin to poke out. His claws grow too, longer and sharper, as do his teeth, and a crown of antlers begins to creep onto his forehead. 

There’s more too, but Will doesn’t see it, because he’s doing some screaming of his own. His wings are getting larger too, but they never had feathers, so now he scratches frantically as feather after feather after feather pokes through his skin to expand and dry in the air of hell, black as night. His heart beats faster and faster and faster, until suddenly one moment Will could swear that it’s beating so fast it will explode, and then quite suddenly, it’s no longer there at all, missing, gone, punched out from his chest like someone had reached it and yanked with all their might.

“Hannibal,” he tries to say, but there’s no response.

Will falls unconscious under a cloud of feathers and blood, and knows nothing more.

* * *

In the meantime, someone steps through time and space, and passes between the two enormous forms of winged devils with nary a passing glance. The person, if they can even be called that, reaches down and scoops up one glowing heart before striding quickly to a large chest and, with a quick gesture, retrieving the second. The Resurrection Stone gleams once, and then leaps into the air to adorn the simple golden ring they wear.

They stop only briefly, to pat what was once Will Graham on the head.

“I didn’t say you’d be alone forever, did I?” the person says laughingly. “To stories untold, William Graham. I wish you the best. And hopefully, you’ll never grow tired of pomegranate, because quite honestly after a few dozen millennia I was quite sick of the thing. Of course, I’ll be here long after you’re gone, so I suppose in the end, I’ll be stuck with all these trees yet again.”

There’s a whisper, and then they’re gone, leaving only a whirlwind of feathers behind.

* * *

When Will wakes up again, there’s a second throne on the dais. It emerges without fanfare or request, simply just is _there_ , present and accounted for.

“I imagine,” Hannibal says dryly once he sees it, “that when you met me, you didn’t foresee this.”

“No, not really.”

“Do you regret it?”

“I’m the devil. I can’t feel regret.”

Hannibal hums and gives him the side eye. “As a fellow devil, I might have a different response.”

“Oh, shut up.”

Hannibal, amazingly, does shut up. Probably because Will peels off his pants and spends the next few decades getting better acquainted with a body he’s already pretty much memorized, although Hannibal gets in more than his far share of scenting and sniffing to his non-existent heart’s content. Will likes this new ability to actually lose his clothes and roll about in decadent sheets, pressed close by Hannibal’s soft wings and surrounded by Hannibal’s arms.

“I’ll return your precious elder wand to its original state if you give me the invisibility cloak,” Hannibal offers.

“You do realize we can turn invisible on our own, right?”

“However, that is sadly an all-or-nothing result.”

“ . . . You want to go terrorize someone as the floating ghost head of a cannibal, don’t you?”

“Well. No need to be crass.”

“You have a better way of putting it?”

“One should always use every advantage in establishing one’s new position in life. Or death. Or hell, as it were.”

“Or you could just shut up and come here and kiss me.”

“Or you could give me the invisibility cloak.”

“If you dare to sneak up on my hellhounds, I am going to have very stern words with you.”

“Will Graham, I would never.”

“Just kiss me, damn it.”

“As my devil commands,” Hannibal says with an ostentatious bow and a wicked smile, and Will loses another century tumbling around in bed.

FINIS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s how they lived, devil-y ever after. Oops, meant happily. Or did I? :D
> 
> Anyways, thanks to everyone for seeing me through my first multichapter fic, it’s been a whirlwind, and special thanks to the lovely peacefrog who tolerated my ramblings and encouraged me to write this. Comments and kudos will go towards feeing my muse as we take on the perilous journey of writing more Hannigram AUs (as I seem to be incapable of writing canon stuff). I think up next I either have a soulmate AU or an apprentice Ripper AU or a Greek god AU, so if you wanna stick around for that, that’d be cool. If not then you can come flail around with me on [tumblr](http://thesilverqueenlady.tumblr.com).


End file.
